1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to the trimming of plants, and in particular to the trimming of plant buds and flowers.
2. Description of the Background Art
There are a multitude of machines and methods for cutting, chipping, trimming, and grinding plant materials for a variety of purposes such as for gardening, making wood products, food processing, agriculture, and composting. Although there are a number of prior art apparatuses in these related fields, there are only a couple of apparatuses that are sufficiently related in purpose and/or design to that of the present invention to bear detailed discussion.
One such prior art apparatus as described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,168,643 (Mercier) describes a leaf snatcher for taking leaves and other small plant debris and putting this material into a waste container. This apparatus, which is specifically designed for yard cleanup of leaves and small plant debris, uses a round, horizontal grate with a rotating cutting blade underneath designed to create a vacuum to pull the plant material through the grate into a waste receptacle underneath. This machine is designed for coarse cutting and suction of the material and not for careful trimming of the plant material so that it can be effectively used for the preparation of potpourri, catnip, and other decorative or olfactory products. This apparatus is similar in design concept and purpose to European Patent Application No. 0004144A1 (Peck).
A very similar apparatus to that disclosed in the above-mentioned Mercier patent is published U.S. Patent Application No. 2007/0069056A1 (Shouse, et al). This application describes an apparatus and method for trimming flowers and related plant material to make such things as potpourri, catnip, and other decorative or olfactory products. The apparatus, which was intended for trimming flowers, uses a simple round, horizontal grating located just above a horizontal rotating blade as disclosed in the Mercier patent to trim off unwanted parts of a flower (or other parts of a plant) that extend through the grating and are sheared by the rotating blade. The purpose of the machine is to reduce the amount of hand cutting of flowers and related plant parts, thereby lowering the cost of production. However, as pointed out in its specification, the flowers or other plant parts must still be “rolled on the machine” (i.e, around the top side of the grating) by hand. The specification admits that the machine only “reduces” the amount of labor formerly needed to perform this task.
Another example is set out in U.S. Pat. No. 7,028,844 (Nelson) which describes a specialized machine for processing dried lavender. This apparatus utilizes two vertically oriented opposing belt rollers that are placed nearly parallel to each other to form a moving wedge-shaped conveyor that take hold of the lavender and move it into an ever decreasing space between the belts. The process of crushing the lavender between the wedged belts results in the flower buds (which results mostly in chaff) separating from the stems and falling to a collection bin below the belts. At the end of the belt system, the stems and other debris are pushed out through a slot into a collection basket as waste product. The use of this apparatus has a number of drawbacks: it still requires significant hand labor to insert the lavender which must then be hand-inserted into the apparatus from the open top side in a manner that avoids jamming or overflowing of the wedge belt design. Moreover, there is consideration damage to the flower buds resulting in the creation of significant amounts of chaff and debris that must be further separated and portions collected as dust that must be discarded.
As shown above with the state of the existing art, there is still considerable hand labor required for trimming plant buds and flowers.
Perhaps even more importantly, the finished quality of flower buds is not easily controllable and desired portions of flower buds are often crushed and/or cut away. For certain types of finished products, this is a serious drawback and is the reason that most plant processing of this type is still done with hand cutting.
The above described inventions can only operate with dry plant material and can become clogged or gummed up when the particular type of plant being processed has greater amounts of natural surface oils on its stems, leaves, and flowers.
Finally, the aforementioned inventions pose a hazard for the operator or the operator's clothing because the operator has to place the leaves on the respective grill, thereby creating a possibility that hair, a piece of clothing or a small appendage (e.g., a child or animal) could get caught in the apparatus.
All of the above negative factors add to the cost of production and to non-optimal product quality and safety issues for the operator. Consequently, there is a need in this field of art for an apparatus that is less labor intensive, has superior controllability of the end-product quality, can operate with plants with varying degrees of oils, and has significantly improved safety for the operator.